Volunteering with Wave

What is a Volunteer?

A Volunteer is a person who freely gives their time, skills and experience to an organisation. Volunteering can take many forms; some tasks require particular skills, whereas others require none. Volunteering may be for a limited time to complete a particular project or may be on an ongoing basis.

Volunteering with Wave

There are lots of fun and different ways of getting involved in Volunteering at Wave.

You could find yourself doing all sorts of things including; assisting with updating databases, administration duties, serving tasty refreshments in Café Wave, creating worksheets for schools and getting involved with special events!

At Wave, we value each and every one of our Volunteers and we’ve really thought long and hard about how to make volunteering an incredible experience and something you will never forget.

We are always on the look-out for new Volunteers who want to offer their time and enthusiasm and there are so many ways you could get involved.

We are committed to treating all our Volunteers with great care and respect and that means we take our time in making sure everyone understands what is involved.

We deliberately don’t ask anyone to list lots of different skills and we firmly believe everyone and, we mean EVERYONE, has the potential to offer something to help Wave deliver a wonderful Visitor experience.

If that’s important to you, then we would love to hear from you and if you decide you want to volunteer with us, then here are some questions and answers you may find useful:

Will I start tomorrow?

No. We will make sure you understand clearly what’s involved and that once you do, you genuinely want to volunteer with us. We will do this by asking you to attend an information interview because we know it’s vital that all our Volunteers share the values that make Wave a fair and fun place for everyone to enjoy.

How much time will I have to give?

Pretty much, as much as you would like to. Obviously, for certain roles such as assisting in Café Wave, you’ll need to be on site at set times, but there are so many ways to get involved that you could end up volunteering from home doing things like writing worksheets for schools, or help with our business planning – and you can do that in your pyjamas if you want to, at any time of the day or night for as many or as few hours a week that suit you.

I’m a bit lonely, will this be good for me?

Lots of us are lonely and we know it’s often very hard to admit that. No one here is going to force you to say that it might be one of your reasons for wanting to volunteer. If it is, we respect that. Wave is a beautiful place to meet new and friendly people, including staff and other Volunteers and, of course, Visitors. We are also able to offer free entry to some (although not all) special events.

Will Volunteering at The Fort help me find a job?

It might. There are no guarantees about that and it would be wrong of us to create false expectations and we will not do so. We will offer you the opportunity to do lots of different things and if you volunteer regularly with us for more than three months, we will work with you to put together a comprehensive reference that you can take to potential employers, or to help you get into further training opportunities. We will also issue Certificates of Involvement to one-off special events and regular Volunteers.

What exactly will I be doing?

We have a few main areas, or roles, that people volunteer in. There are:

Administration

Catering

Front of House

Maintenance

It is likely that your main role will be in one of these areas. This means that you will have a specific member of the Team with responsibility to support you and a clear, written task description which is there to guide you in what we would like you to do. Having said that, you will be able to try out different things and we are always flexible to people bringing in new ideas and skills.

Will I get ‘chucked’ in at the deep end?

Not a chance! In addition to your written task description and named Team Member who will support you throughout your involvement, we will provide you with a thorough introduction and some on-going training during your time volunteering with us.

Is there anything else I need to give you?

We have a ‘Duty of Care’ to every single Visitor who walks through Wave’s doors. Many of our Visitors are children and vulnerable adults. They have to feel safe and we have to know that we have fulfilled our responsibility to ensure they are safe as possible. We take this Duty of Care very seriously. For that reason, if you volunteer in some of our roles, we will ask you to complete a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check and we can explain this in more detail at that stage.

We also want to make it very clear that we also recognise our Duty of Care towards all our Volunteers and making these checks helps to protect you too. Please do not assume if you have a criminal conviction that it means you cannot volunteer at Wave, you can raise this with us securely and we will treat your questions confidentially with respect and respond honestly.

What we offer:

Flexible times you can volunteer and a huge range of fun things to do

Any agreed expenses will be met

An opportunity to learn new skills, meet new people and take part in professional training